Slashdot Mirror
AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+
Harle writes "Today AMD has introduced a new version of the Athlon, codenamed "Barton," that features twice as much L2 cache as previous chips. Along with the increase in L2 cache comes an increase in the Athlon's performance rating -- specifically the new 2.17 GHz chip is rated at 3000+.
The clockrate is actually slighly lower than the Athlon XP 2800+'s 2.25 GHz speed, so the question becomes "Does the cache improve performance enough to counter the loss in clockspeed?" For the most part, the answer seems to be "yes," however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4.
With the recent delay of the Athlon 64 to September, this is AMD's top desktop chip for some time to come. The reviews are starting to pop up at Ace's Hardware and Extremetech." There's also reviews on The Tech Report, SimHQ, HotHardware, EarthV, in Norwegian on Hardware.no, and last but not least AMD's press release. I'm sure there's many many more links, but I'm tired of pasting them all in here, so post 'em below. *grin*
so post 'em below..
OK Then... Anandtech link
Does the cost implications completely prohibit this or do the performance benefits tail off too quickly. SUN seem to able to achieve impressive performance with lower far lower Mhz (I know its different architecture) but I get the impression the large amounts of cache (2-4 MB) they use contributes significantly to performance.
Yes, cache is terribly expensive to place on chips in large amounts. It tends to be much harder to shrink than the rest of the transistors on the chip, and the design work necessary to scale the cache to meet the ever shrinking die size is complex and harsh. Overall, with consumer chips that need to be under a certain price threshold to be purchased, Intel and AMD have both found its far cheaper to keep increasing clock speed while decreasing die size than it is to increase cache.
My guess is that this latest move by AMD is an update to that mentality. It proceeds along their realization that they might be unable to compete solely on the grounds of clockspeed. However, with the decreasing performance returns for clockspeed increases, this is less of an issue for AMD than one would think. This new core seems to indicate its becoming cheaper for their engineers to spend more time on chip design as well as use the limited die space for cache rather than other components.
The yield drops roughly quadratically with area of the chip. So, if the L2 cache occupies 50% of the chip and we want to double the cache size, the yield would drop to roughly 44% of the original yield. To make up for this the price would have to more than double and I do not believe that most people buying desktops are willing to accept that.
AMD Processor Ordering Part Number (OPN) Breakdown
(1) Processor Core Architecture/Brand Name
(2) Model Number
(3) Package Type
(4) Operating Voltage(Nominal Core Voltage)
(5) Maximum Die Temperature
(6) Level 2 Cache Size
(7) Maximum System-Bus (Front-Side-Bus) Speed
(1) Processor Core Architecture/Brand Name
(only Thoroughbred and Barton cores are 0.13 m)
AXDA ----- AMD Athlon XP -- 0.13 m
AX ------- AMD Athlon XP -- 0.18 m
AMSN ----- AMD Athlon MP -- 0.13 m
AMP/AHX -- AMD Athlon MP -- 0.18 m
K7/A ----- AMD Athlon ----- 0.18 m
(6) Level 2 Cache Size
1 -- 64 KB
2 -- 128 KB
3 -- 256 KB
4 -- 512 KB (only Barton cores have a 512 KB L2 cache)
(7) Maximum System-Bus Speed
B -- 200 MHz
C -- 266 MHz
D -- 333 MHz